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Son texts mother during shooting

What followed was a remarkable string of 70 more texts, displaying remarkable calm and the bond between a father and son amid a crisis that made national headlines.

Conboy, a Web developer and self-avowed "data sharer," said Monday he posted the texts to his website to revisit later, to write about more, to remind him on some distant day that "my relationship with my son is absolutely where I want it to be."

Friday's shooting began at 12:33 p.m., when, according to police accounts, 18-year-old student Karl Pierson walked into the Centennial, Colorado, school armed with a pump-action shotgun, a machete and a backpack containing three Molotov cocktails, a bandolier of ammunition across his chest.

According to police, Pierson shot 17-year-old Claire Esther Davis once in the head amid shots fired randomly into school hallways. He also ignited one of the firebombs in the school library before killing himself in the back corner of the school library.

Conboy didn't know any of that when he heard the sirens and saw the lights at the high school he once attended and where Ian now goes to school.

But he knew something was wrong. He steered the car not toward the Qdoba restaurant where he and a friend had planned to have lunch, but toward his son's school.

Dozens of texts followed. Can you get to the Burger King? No, Ian says. Go to Euclid Middle School. Actually, don't. Change of plans. Go to the Shepherd of the Hills Church instead.

I'm there, Dad says. You have to check me out, the son says. Standing in line, Dad answers.

"Okay thanks," Ian texts.

And then nothing for more than four hours.

The last entry is a photo -- Conboy and his son on the basement couch, alone, after Conboy had broken down in tears. After the rest of the family had gone from crying to celebrating. After everyone else had headed upstairs to decorate the Christmas tree.

"Oh my God," Conboy told CNN on Monday of the moment. "He's here, and what have we been through together."

A message on a hand

Another Arapahoe student, Matt Bowers, had his own message. It was written on his hand, in case he didn't get out alive.

"Family, I love you all so much," Bowers scrawled, the last two words underlined. Then he added, "I'm up here now," above a picture of a cross.

Bowers told CNN's The Lead that he was in a literature class when he and his classmates heard a loud bang from down the hall. He didn't think anything of it until they heard two more. His teacher's face "just became completely pale," he said, and everyone rushed to a corner of classroom away from doors and windows.

He's kept the ball-point pen he used to write that farewell ever since.

"I've never had such a frightening experience in my life before that," Bowers said. "It really changed how I looked at my life, and just my whole perspective on what life is."

Federal law makes it illegal to sell or give a firearm to anyone who "has been adjudicated as a mental defective or has been committed to any mental institution" but private sellers and gun shows have no background check requirement.